Coinbase is publicly overhauling its customer support, using radical transparency as a core strategy to rebuild user trust.
Wes Griffith, Senior CX Director at Coinbase, explains that the new approach is governed by a "data and judgment" framework, which prioritizes human empathy over automation.
The philosophy makes customer satisfaction the top metric over cost and embeds proactive support directly into the product to prevent problems before they occur.
Most companies fix a flawed customer experience behind closed doors. But Coinbase is doing it in public. Through a public campaign that includes sharing CSAT progress and performance metrics, the company is treating transparency as a tool for accountability. The bet is simple: earning back customer confidence is what matters most.
Leading the charge is Wes Griffith, Senior Director of Global Consumer Support Experience at Coinbase. After honing his playbook at Amazon, he launched a premium "Concierge" service that drove over 95% customer satisfaction in its first year. At the heart of his strategy is a simple framework that governs every decision in the high-stakes world of crypto: "data and judgment." In this complex and evolving financial landscape, Griffith emphasizes that AI isn't a substitute for judgment or empathy, particularly when human connection is paramount.
"We recognize that many of our long-time customers have historical impressions of our support, and frankly, we aren't proud of some of those past experiences. This transparency is about re-introducing them to the new Coinbase support and earning back their trust," Griffith says. After deploying an automated agent for users who made irreversible blockchain errors, his team discovered the high cost of misjudging that balance firsthand.
Data vs. empathy: While the bot provided accurate information, it couldn't meet the customer's emotional needs. "An automated experience can tell a customer that they've made an irreversible error, but it cannot meet them in that moment of empathy. We've actually pulled some of those use cases from production, and they now create an immediate express path to a human. The ability for a human to meet the customer in that moment delivers higher satisfaction and, most importantly, allows us to educate them so they don't make a similar mistake in the future."
But AI can also be a core teammate for human agents, Griffith explains. As crypto products become increasingly complex and a broader suite of offerings emerges, AI can help agents surface relevant data in real time so people don't have to memorize a constantly growing product suite.
For Griffith, the strategy begins with a proactive foundation that aims to solve issues before they escalate. Here, his team works on two fronts: detecting systemic anomalies and identifying individual customer friction points, fixing problems before they become ticket spikes. This proactive approach often involves a 'human-in-the-loop' process, ensuring that early signals and judgment are combined to address issues effectively before they can escalate.
Satisfaction first: A "judgment-first" philosophy isn't just a talking point, however. It's backed by a clear hierarchy of metrics that demonstrate the public's commitment to transparency. "Cost and efficiency are simply guardrail metrics for us. They are important, but they are not the point," Griffith says. "CSAT is our number one metric, and it is the primary way that we evaluate the health of our business and the experience that we're delivering."
Looking ahead, Griffith’s vision is to make support almost invisible. This vision, Griffith explains, is the ultimate fulfillment of the mantra that 'the best customer support experience is that you don't need to contact anybody.' For him, the goal is to embed education and proactive solutions directly into the product, guiding users toward success. To illustrate, he gives the example of proactively notifying a user about how much they could have saved on fees by using their Coinbase One membership benefits, an initiative currently in testing. Here, the concept of "education," once a reactive response to human error, becomes a proactive, scalable feature that adds value.
Ultimately, this forward-looking vision is rooted in a sense of duty to users in an industry still taking shape, Griffith concludes. "Crypto is a new frontier for a lot of people. We have a responsibility to help people navigate that in a trusted way."
